Part of Crosspoint's upgrade plan includes the addition of two new Avid DS Nitris systems, which were designed for advanced editors and artists who want the ultimate in quality, performance, creative flexibility and interoperability. "We just purchased a DS Nitris and upgraded our existing Avid system for Nitris," says Schmactenberger. "Both systems use the new duel 3.02 GHz Xeons."

The Avid DS Nitris has a number of components that deliver high-performance finishing for both SD and HD video, including the DS software, a workstation, and the Nitris device itself. According to Maple, "Avid includes some custom hardware that can handle video and audio in real time, but it runs on a regular PC." That means the components are relatively inexpensive.

The system offers guaranteed real-time editing and effects for multistream 10-bit HD. The Avid DS Nitris non-linear editing system combines deep creative editing and finishing software with the most powerful media processing hardware available--the new Avid Nitris Digital Nonlinear Accelerator (DNA). With its comprehensive set of creative tools, the industry-leading Avid editing environment, and full support for Avid Unity networks, Avid DS Nitris delivers extreme versatility. It supports a wide range of high-definition formats including, production-quality compressed HD resolutions in 8 and 10 bits. Even 2K DPX files can be handled in their native colorspace and processed at 8, 16, or 32 Float-bit precision

With a comprehensive integration of tools for professional Media Composer-style nonlinear audio and video editing, compositing, paint, character generation, special effects, image treatment, and project media management all within a single consistent interface, the Nitris system meets Crosspoint's various needs in a streamlined fashion.

The Nitris component itself, serves as a hardware accelerator for advanced video editing. According to Avid, the Nitris offers media processing equivalent to over 30 of today's fastest Pentium 4 processors. It delivers hardware-guaranteed real-time performance for up to 8 streams of SD media and 2 streams of 10-bit HD media for effects such as real-time dissolves, SMPTE wipes, DVEs, Symphony-style color correction, HD Universal Mastering, keys, and downstream graphics.

Furthermore, Avid Nitris supports the broadest range of high-quality formats and professional I/O connections of any single nonlinear system. It supports 8-and 10-bit SPMTE 292M SDI for high-definition video I/O and SMPTE 259M SDI for standard-definition video I/O. The Nitris also let editors work with HD, NTSC, and PAL support on the same system without reformatting drives.

Avid couples the DS Nitris with a HP XW8000 workstation--the company's top-of-the-line system. The HP xw8000 features dual Intel Xeon 3.06 GHz processors, 3-4GB RAM, an UltraSCSI 320 73GB hard drive, and a custom graphics card tweaked by Avid. The workstation also comes with a DVD+RW+R combo drive and two HP P1130 21" flat-screen monitors. Crosspoint will run Microsoft Windows XP Professional, but the machines also support Red Hat Linux.

"The nice thing is that Avid has built the entire thing, except for the computer," says Maple. " It's their graphics card, their hard drive, and their I/O systems--and they have gone to a lot of trouble to make sure it has everything that you need."